Start with a vivid description of the pain, present an enviable world where that problem doesn’t exist, then explain how to get there using your tool.

It’s super simple, and it works for cold emails, drip campaigns, and sales discovery decks. Basically anywhere you need to get people excited about what you have to say.

In fact, a lot of companies are already using this formula to great success. The methods used in the sales presentation examples below will help you do the same.

Facebook — How Smiles and Simplicity Make You More Memorable

We’re all drawn to happiness. A study at Harvard tells us that emotion is contagious.

You’ll notice that the “Before” (pre-Digital Age) pictures in Facebook’s slides all display neutral faces. But the cover slide that introduces Facebook and the “After” slides have smiling faces on them.

This is important. The placement of those graphics is an intentional persuasion technique.

Studies by psychologists show that we register smiles faster than any other expression. All it takes is 500 milliseconds (1/20th of a second). And when participants in a study were asked to recall expressions, they consistently remembered happy faces over neutral ones.

What to do about it: Add a happy stock photo to your intro and “After” slides, and keep people in “Before” slides to neutral expressions.

Example: Slide 2 is a picture of a consumer’s hand holding an iPhone — something we can all relate to.

Why It Works: Pictures are more effective than words — it’s called Picture Superiority. In presentations, pictures help you create connections with your audience. Instead of spoon-feeding them everything word for word, you let them interpret. This builds trust.

Tactic #2: Use icons to show statistics you’re comparing instead of listing them out.

Example:Slide 18 uses people icons to emphasize how small 38 out of 100 people is compared to 89 out of 100.

Contently — How to Build A Strong Bridge, Brick By Brick

Just like how you can’t drive from Marin County to San Francisco without the Golden Gate, you can’t connect a “Before” to an “After” without a bridge.

Add the mission statement of your company — something Contently does from Slide 1 of their deck. Having a logo-filled Customers slide isn’t unusual for sales presentations, but Contently goes one step further by showing you exactly what they do for these companies.

They then drive home the Before-After-Bridge Formula further with case studies:

Why It Works:According to a Cornell study, graphs and equations have persuasive power. They “signal a scientific basis for claims, which grants them greater credibility.”

Tactic #2:Keep slides that have bullets to a minimum (no more than one in every five slides).

Why It Works:According to an experiment by the International Journal of Business Communication, “Subjects exposed to a graphic representation paid significantly more attention to, agreed more with, and better recalled the strategy than did subjects who saw a (textually identical) bulleted list.”

Tactic #3:Follow up your descriptions with visual examples.

Example:After stating “15000+ vetted, ready to work journalists searchable by location, topical experience, and social media influence” on Slide 8, Contently shows what this looks like firsthand on slides 9 and 10.

Why It Works:The same reason why prospects clamor for demos and car buyers ask for test drives. You’re never truly convinced until you see something for yourself.

Yesware — How To Go Above And Beyond With Your Benefits

The graphic shows you what that 10 hours looks like for prospects vs. customers. It also calls out a pain that the product removes: data entry.

Visuals are more effective every time. They fuel retention of a presentation from 10% to 65%.

But it’s not as easy as just including a graphic. You need to keep the design clean.

Can you feel it?

Clutter provokes anxiety and stress because it bombards our minds with excessive visual stimuli, causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren’t important.

Here’s a tip from Yesware’s Graphic Designer, Ginelle DeAntonis:

“Customer logos won’t all necessarily have the same dimensions, but keep them the same size visually so that they all have the same importance. You should also disperse colors throughout, so that you don’t for example end up with a bunch of blue logos next to each other. Organize them in a way that’s easy for the eye, because in the end it’s a lot of information at once.”

Here are more tactics to inspire sales presentation ideas:

Tactic #1: Personalize your final slide with your contact information and a headline that drives emotion.

Example:Our Mid-Market Team Lead Kyle includes his phone number and email address with “We’re Here For You”

Why It Works:These small details show your audience that:

1) This is about giving them the end picture, not making a sale;

2) The end of the presentation doesn’t mean the end of the conversation; and

DealTap — How To Use Leading Questions To Your Advantage

DealTap’s slides ask viewers to choose between two scenarios over and over. Each has an obvious winner:

Ever heard of the Focusing Effect?

It’s part of what makes us tick as humans and what makes this design-move effective. We focus on one thing and then ignore the rest. Here, DealTap puts the magnifying glass on paperwork vs. automated transactions.

Easy choice.

Sure, DealTap’s platform might have complexities that rival paperwork, but we don’t think about that. We’re looking at the pile of work one the left and the simpler, single interface on the right.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator — How to Create Excitement With Color

The color red is proven to increase the pulse and heart rate. Beyond that, it’s associated with being active, aggressive, and outspoken. LinkedIn Sales Navigator uses red on slides to draw attention to main points:

You can use hues in your own slides to guide your audience’s emotions. Green gives peace; grey adds a sense of calm; blue breeds trust. See more here.

Tip: You can grab free photos from Creative Commons and then set them to black & white and add a colored filter on top using a (also free) tool like Canva. Here’s the sizing for your image:

Caveat: Check with your marketing team first to see if you have a specific color palette or brand guidelines to follow.

Here are some other takeaways from LinkedIn’s sales presentation:

Tactic #1:Include one clear call-to-action on your final slide.

Example:Slide 9 has a “Learn More” CTA button.

Why It Works:According to the Paradox of Choice, the more options you give, the less likely they are to act.

Senior Content Marketing Specialist at Yesware.

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